The LG G Pad 8.3 is the tablet for those who want iPad mini with Retina display high end appointments in an Android tablet. The 8.3" G Pad has a 1920 x 1200 display, a fast quad core CPU and a rare thing among today's Android tablets: a metal back. The G Pad 8.3 is available in black or white and it lists for $349, though it's often on sale for $299 at Best Buy. This is a good looking tablet that's compact enough to fit in a large pocket or purse, but it feels roomier than the Nexus 7 thanks to the 1.3" increase in screen real estate. Speaking of the Nexus, for those who prefer a pure Android experience, there's the LG G Pad 8.3 Google Play Edition that sells for $349 on the Google Play Store.

The LG runs on the 1.7GHz quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 CPU with Adreno 320 graphics and 2 gigs of RAM. That's a fast CPU, though since tablets often lag behind flagship Android smartphones, it's not as fast as the Snapdragon 800 in LG's own LG G2 and G Flex smartphones. For those of you who have an absolute love of speed, Samsung will soon release their Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 with a $50 higher price tag and the Snapdragon 800. That said, the 600 with four Krait 300 cores is plenty fast and it handles recent demanding 3D games very well.

This is a WiFi-only tablet, and it has dual band WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, an IR blaster with AV remote and a GPS. If you need wide area networking, you'll have to look to a MiFi or your phone's mobile hotspot feature when not near a WiFi hotspot.

LG has customized Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean quite heavily, and the experience is similar to the LG G2 and G Flex: lots of Q apps (LG's name for their custom features), a note-taking app, screen capture with annotation, a language translator that uses the camera and more. We continue to enjoy their take on multi-tasking with floating resizable app windows and the knock on feature where you tap the screen twice to wake up the tablet. The icon rendition is less cartoony than on the G Flex, thankfully.